News:

“Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors; we borrow it from our Children.”Ancient American Indian Proverb Civilitas successit barbarum Ubi Jus - Ibi Remedium ----> Equity sees that as done what ought to be done Equity will not suffer a wrong to be without a remedy - Equity delights in equality - One who seeks equity must do equity - Equity aids the vigilant, not those who slumber on their rights - Equity imputes an intent to fulfill an obligation - Equity acts in personam - Equity abhors a forfeiture - Equity does not require an idle gesture - He who comes into equity must come with clean hands - Equity delights to do justice and not by halves -Equity will not complete an imperfect gift - Equity will not allow a statute to be used as a cloak for fraud

Central banks have guaranteed a bubble collapse is the only possible output of the system they've created.

The psychology of blowoff tops in asset bubbles is fascinating: let's start with the first requirement of a move qualifying as a blowoff top, which is the vast majority of participants deny the move is a blowoff top.

This is not a small cut. It's massive. Some people say the effects are already baked into the cake, but I don't think that's correct. I think it'll buoy the markets for 2-3 more years, most likely. The dollar is headed down. Bond prices are going up. Gold is going up, Oil appears to be headed up. To me, this is likely to all build in the current direction until another huge bust happens, but my guess is it's 3-4 years away, still. All the things I pay attention to seem to line up for that. Could it happen sooner? Sure, but I wouldn't count on it.

Sell, and sell everything now rather than ride the bubble collapse down.

This is probably premature. People selling stocks like Apple and Amazon might see them double again before the crash comes. I definitely agree that a "buy stocks and forget about it" Warren Buffett approach to equities is not too smart. But I'd bet plenty of savvy investors CAN come close enough to calling the actual top to get out with most of their gains intact.

When I read this article, I wondered about CHS' "sell" assertion as well. It does seem premature, although I'm sure you have better reasons for thinking so than I do. My reason was that the tax cut hasn't even been on the books for a month, so the long term effects are yet to be fully felt and priced. Would be nice if we had 3-4 years. Who knows?

I'm with CHS on this one. We are nearing the end of the Blow Off. My reasons for belieiving this are different than CHS's reasons.

We are in a disguised Depression. The idiotic pricing formula they use on Wall Street is NOT based on anything rational. It is based on purchasing demand which is absent of all fundamentals. The tiny percentage of the US population that can buy large blocks of stocks for corporate buy backs is further distoring the FACT that there are fewer and fewer people to buy the products that corporations sell.

I do not think we will get past the end of February before a massive tanking takes place. This market is going to come out of the sky like a shooting star. 🌠

It will be poetic justice to see corporations that jacked up their stock price with buy backs while they were laying off employees have to EAT their stock at super low prices.

CHS may have his Market Blow off Top timing exactly right!

🌠Baltic Index Falls, Capesizes Post Biggest Weekly Drop in 2 Years

January 19, 2018 by Reuters

Reuters

SNIPPET:

Jan 19 (Reuters) – The Baltic Exchange’s main sea freight index fell on Friday and continued to linger around five month lows as the capesize segment recorded its biggest weekly percentage decline in two years.

In one of his first moves as director of the (See: Orwell) Consumer Financial Protection Board, Mick Mulvaney scrapped a rule regulating payday lenders. "This has everything to do with facilitating fraud and predation," says white collar criminologist Bill Black

Capitalism left to it's own devices is going to dismantle democracy and sell the pieces to the highest bidder, thats why we need a strong democracy to act as regulator of capitalism.

Thom Hartmann Jan. 24, 2018 2:00 pm

Agelbert NOTE: While Thom makes a valid point, the fact is that Democracy is ONLY compatible with Socialism 🌼. Democracy is INCOMPATIBLE with Capitalism. WHY? Because the goal of everyCapitalist is to achieve a MONOPOLY and DESTROY the competition. A Monopoly is just another word for a single DICTATOR that DICTATES price. When have you EVER heard of employees being allowed to VOTE on what the Employer 🦖 is supposed to pay them?

Quote

"Capitalist ideology 🦖 claims that the world is perfectly ordered and everybody is in their place (i.e. everybody gets what they deserve). This self legitmating aspect of Capitalism is Socially Catastrophic. 🦀 This is the Victorian view of the world." Rob Urie - Author " Zen Economics"

We all know what would happen if progressives took over, free college, universal healthcare, but have you ever wondered what America will look like if the morbidly rich, conservatives, the neocons and the alt right get their way?

There is hope for the poor greedy souls, like Golden Oxen, who shorted Tesla (that have lost OVER a billion dollars so far - don't challenge me on that, Godfader. I've got the hard data to stuff in your mouth if you try that.).

Ya see, the Margin level in the Stupid Stock Market is terrifically, ridiculously and historically high. That means, for all you "market geniuses" here at the Doomstead Diner, that the Crash of 2018 will make history🌠. Margin calls goose falling markets like nobody's bidness. Of course there are a few other contributing factors (see video below). The bottom line is that CHS was right and everybody that is still going long in stocks is wrong. GO, who shorted Tesla some time ago (and was probably forced to cover to keep from losing his ass) will probably try to short Tesla AGAIN. Who knows, it might work this time.

But really, with literally HUNDREDS of high volume stocks tanking, pickin' on Tesla is kinda economically silly.

Enjoy the video, Doomers. I do believe this fellow is exactly right.Oh, and I still don't own any stocks or plan to buy any.🕊

Central banks have guaranteed a bubble collapse is the only possible output of the system they've created.

The psychology of blowoff tops in asset bubbles is fascinating: let's start with the first requirement of a move qualifying as a blowoff top, which is the vast majority of participants deny the move is a blowoff top.

This is not a small cut. It's massive. Some people say the effects are already baked into the cake, but I don't think that's correct. I think it'll buoy the markets for 2-3 more years, most likely. The dollar is headed down. Bond prices are going up. Gold is going up, Oil appears to be headed up. To me, this is likely to all build in the current direction until another huge bust happens, but my guess is it's 3-4 years away, still. All the things I pay attention to seem to line up for that. Could it happen sooner? Sure, but I wouldn't count on it.

Sell, and sell everything now rather than ride the bubble collapse down.

This is probably premature. People selling stocks like Apple and Amazon might see them double again before the crash comes. I definitely agree that a "buy stocks and forget about it" Warren Buffett approach to equities is not too smart. But I'd bet plenty of savvy investors CAN come close enough to calling the actual top to get out with most of their gains intact.

When I read this article, I wondered about CHS' "sell" assertion as well. It does seem premature, although I'm sure you have better reasons for thinking so than I do. My reason was that the tax cut hasn't even been on the books for a month, so the long term effects are yet to be fully felt and priced. Would be nice if we had 3-4 years. Who knows?

Quote

I'm with CHS on this one. We are nearing the end of the Blow Off. My reasons for belieiving this are different than CHS's reasons.

We are in a disguised Depression. The idiotic pricing formula they use on Wall Street is NOT based on anything rational. It is based on purchasing demand which is absent of all fundamentals. The tiny percentage of the US population that can buy large blocks of stocks for corporate buy backs is further distoring the FACT that there are fewer and fewer people to buy the products that corporations sell.

I do not think we will get past the end of February before a massive tanking takes place. This market is going to come out of the sky like a shooting star. 🌠

It will be poetic justice to see corporations that jacked up their stock price with buy backs while they were laying off employees have to EAT their stock at super low prices.

Quote

CHS may have his Market Blow off Top timing exactly right!

🌠Baltic Index Falls, Capesizes Post Biggest Weekly Drop in 2 Years

January 19, 2018 by Reuters

Reuters

SNIPPET:

Jan 19 (Reuters) – The Baltic Exchange’s main sea freight index fell on Friday and continued to linger around five month lows as the capesize segment recorded its biggest weekly percentage decline in two years.

There is hope for the poor greedy souls, like Golden Oxen, who shorted Tesla (that have lost OVER a billion dollars so far - don't challenge me on that, Godfader. I've got the hard data to stuff in your mouth if you try that.).

Ya see, the Margin level in the Stupid Stock Market is terrifically, ridiculously and historically high. That means, for all you "market geniuses" here at the Doomstead Diner, that the Crash of 2018 will make history🌠. Margin calls goose falling markets like nobody's bidness. Of course there are a few other contributing factors (see video below). The bottom line is that CHS was right and everybody that is still going long in stocks is wrong. GO, who shorted Tesla some time ago (and was probably forced to cover to keep from losing his ass) will probably try to short Tesla AGAIN. Who knows, it might work this time.

But really, with literally HUNDREDS of high volume stocks tanking, pickin' on Tesla is kinda economically silly.

Enjoy the video, Doomers. I do believe this fellow is exactly right.Oh, and I still don't own any stocks or plan to buy any.🕊

The Dow is down 900 points since Friday, which is a YUUUGE 3% correction. 445 point drops aren't that big a deal when you're dropping from 27,600 and change.

The apocalypse is not yet here.

Eddie, do not put words in my mouth, please. I NEVER said the "apocalypse was here". I SAID, CHS was right, and YOU, from your previous and present comments, are woefully wrong. If you do not want to admit that, go ahead and "make your own reality" . But frankly, I believe it is foolhardy to think the Crash of 2018 has not begun and CHS was not right. It has. It is NOT the "apocalypse". It is just a good time to watch fools insisting on holding stocks lose their ass. Don't be a fool, Eddie. Get OUT of the stock market while you still can.

The S&P 500 Index fell for the fourth time in five sessions, capping its worst week since early 2016. The selloff in stocks followed better-than-expected jobs data that increased the likelihood the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates next month. Meanwhile, the yield on 10-year Treasuries jumped above 2.85 percent for the first time since January 2014.

While Bitcoin has bounced back above $9,000 miraculously today, after its early collapse, if Deutsche Bank's Masao Muraki is right, VIX's spike is signaling cryptocurrencies have a lot further to fall...

The recent 'triple-low environment' of low interest rates, low spreads, and low volatility gave birth to new asset classes like implied volatility (ETFs selling volatility), and cryptocurrencies. Deutsche Bank has begun to monitor these indices closely as new frontiers of risk-taking.

The prices of both asset classes have plummeted and rebounded simultaneously, and in 2018, correlation between Bitcoin and VIX has increased dramatically.

Besides them being a new frontier of risk-taking, Deutsche see another similarity between these two new asset classes: “the tail wagging the dog.”

(because they can always be shrugged off by using 10Y forward estimates with some hockey-stick extrapolation)

These three charts are the real worries for anyone about to play the 'greater fool' and pile the remaining cash in their retirement savings into stocks...

Deutsche Bank's Binky Chadha notes that US equity positioning is extreme (+1.5sd above average levels). Mutual fund positioning has risen in tandem with the rebound in growth to a 6-year high, with cash balances well below the historical normal range...

Aggregate shorts in cash equities and ETFs, led by cuts in Tech shorts, have for the ﬁrst time fallen below the elevated range they have been in since the ﬁnancial crisis...

Margin debt in brokerage accounts has risen to extremes...

Option market indicators had till last week painted a similar picture, with skew and correlation down sharply, especially at near term maturities, and the put/call ratio low. Inﬂows into equities have surged recently and are on track for the largest monthly inﬂow on record. But equity inﬂows have lagged far behind those to bonds through the cycle and also through the rally over the last 15 months, suggesting plenty of room to catch up.

From a fundamental perspective, we see equities as having priced in the rebound in US and global growth, the corporate tax reform and as having gotten a little ahead.

To summarize - for the hard of reason - There's no more shorts to squeeze as ammo for the ramps, there's no cash on the sidelines, and those that are already in are the most-levered to gains in the history of stocks.

No matter how hard Trump supporters shut their eyes and visualize the past, the average American is not going to time-travel back to the world of the 1950s. Some Americans will work tending the robot factories of the future, but many others will have to find jobs as craft brewers, or construction workers, or social-media managers, or nurses.

Making America great again can be done. But it will take more than aggressive presidential bombast and ham-fisted policies designed to protect dying industries. In order to win the future, the country has to let go of the past.

The Dow closed down 666 points, or 2.5%, its biggest percentage decline since the Brexit turmoil in June 2016 and steepest point decline since the 2008 financial crisis.

A strong jobs report showed wage growth is finally starting to pick up. That's great news for workers, but it reinforced investors' concern about inflation and the bond market.

"It's all about rates. Asset prices and the economy have become addicted to low rates," said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at the Bleakley Financial Group. "Sentiment got euphoric. There is more froth that needs to be taken off."

The sell-off knocked the Dow well below 26,000. Both the Dow and S&P 500 suffered their biggest weekly drops since early 2016 -- roughly 4% each.